Pocket hole joinery

Get Info From Multiple Sources. Pocket hole joinery at the ends of narrow boards, like rails stiles and aprons, will only need pocket screws. Pocket Hole Placement First, a bit of board anatomy. There are three faces: the end grain, the edge grain and the face grain.

When planning the placement of your pocket holes, keep in mind that the screws can go into the edge grain and the face grain, but not into the end grain. Everyone from the do-it-yourselfer to the trim contractor and the professional cabinetmaker can use pocket hole joinery to build stronger, more professional wood joints in less time.

The practical applications are endless. Cabinets, bookshelves, tables, chairs and even simple garage storage can all be joined easily. Two pocket holes square to the miter joint and opposite one another allows pocket hole screws to secure the joint. A face frame clamp makes it easy to hold the joint in position while the screws are inserted.

What makes a pocket-hole joint strong? With pocket-hole joinery, it’s easy to make rock-solid wood projects and long-lasting repairs. Drill – Create a pocket hole at the exact right angle with our specialized drill bit.

Most pocket - hole screws come with an oversized washer head for increased contact with the pocket shoulder, but you can also get screws with a smaller pan head for use with shallow pockets where a washer head would protrude above the workpiece surface.

For outdoor applications, choose stainless steel or coated screws. The technique, in addition to doweling, is said to have its roots in ancient Egypt, although much doubt is thrown on this theory. Kris Williams of Rocky Blue Woodworks completes a coffee table using pocket hole joinery. The nice thing about pocket hole joinery is that you only have to drill a hole in one board: you don’t have to drill a matching hole in its mating piece like you would for a dowel joint.

This allows for a lot of flexibility when positioning your holes. Anywhere you place them on the board it fine. Joining with the pocket hole method isn’t quite as strong as with glue, but it’s sufficient for most projects. You do have the option to dab some glue between the joints, however, without requiring a clamp to hold it in place.

Center a 3⁄" Forstner bit on the hole where the bit emerged from the workpiece face. Drill straight down to a depth of about 1⁄" to make room for the screwhead.

Align the two workpieces, then clamp a scrapwood positioning block, as shown in the top photo. This stops the pocket-hole workpiece from sliding during assembly.

This is also true for pocket hole joinery, because as the screws are tightene they will pull the wood together into whatever shape the ends are cut. A table saw with an accurate fence should be the tool of choice for cutting your material.

Kreg Pocket - Hole Joints are great for making repairs to wood items around your home. But drilling the pocket hole to make a repair can be challenging in hard-to-access spaces.

Kreg offers a wide selection of specialized screws and pocket - hole plugs.

The main advantage of pocket hole joinery over more advanced methods is ease and speed. You could guestimate a good angle and try to drill out pocket holes on your own, but a pocket hole jig guides your drill bit to the right angle, and can quickly be moved from spot to spot for repeated cuts.

To make a joint, drill a hole at a 15º angle into one workpiece using a purpose-designed stepped drill bit, then join it to the second one with self-tapping screws. The jig itself is compact and is made of glass-filled nylon. The simplistic design conceals its usefulness.

Now, the product line includes everything from simple clamp-on jigs to fully-automated industrial versions used in kitchen cabinet and door factories. You need something like a Porter-Cable PC5pocket hole jig and a cordless drill. We actually used an 18V impact driver —just be sure not to overdrive the fastener. When you use a joint like this, be sure to consider how the wood and finish will react to shrinking and swelling.

In terms of strength, a pocket hole joint performs quite respectably. Although generally not as strong as a mortise and tenon or a comparable glue joint, a pocket hole joint is the equal of many of the other “quick and easy” joinery techniques such as a biscuit joint, a loose tenon, or a stub tenon and groove. You can cut pocket holes in the case side at the front edge, and use pocket hole screws to pull the face frame against the front of the case.

This approach frees up clamps, and also means you can keep working with the case without having clamps in the way. Done correctly, pocket holing is a very sound construction technique. In our case, not only is the face frame pocket holed at the joint with glue, but the frame is then also pocket -holed and glued onto the cabinet box all the way around.

I wonder if using pocket hole joinery along with glue might be a stonger way to assemble the carcass (by the carcass I mean just the box itself and the joint I am refering to is the one that joins the base and top to the sides). I might be able to use both dadoes and pocket holes, but that might be overkill.